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by Dizzy Girl

  “Was I little loud?” I asked. He smiled. “Do you think you’d be able to cope with spending time with me? I’m not exactly a neat freak” I warned him, thinking about how hard he had found being in Mark’s cluttered flat and my own slovenly attitudes towards cleaning.

  “It might be good for me to learn to loosen up.” He straightened his cutlery and lined his mug up with his plate as he spoke.

  “Or it could be good fuel for arguments” I countered, “and we never did argue really before.”

  “We’ll work it out” he assured me. I didn’t reply, instead I picked up my cup and stared into the bottom, as if the answers were buried in the grounds at the bottom.

  “Are you scared?” he asked, his voice teasing but light.

  I reached out to take his hand and admitted “yes, I am. I’ve lost you once, I’ve been hurt and had to rebuild my life. I’m not closing myself off to trying again, but I’d be lying if I said I was as brave as I used to be. It’s easier to be cavalier about giving your heart when you don’t know utterly devastating it is when it gets broken.”

  He stroked my hand and thought for a while before replying. “I guess there’s no rush this time. My dad’s gone, he can’t separate us anymore. We could take it slowly, no pressure, and if it doesn’t work, then we find out now and we can still be friends. I’ve thought about you so much over the years, I don’t want to walk away without even trying.”

  “I have too” I said. “I wondered if we’d have made it. We were so young though. Could we have made it through all that time? Not to mention three years apart at uni.”

  “What we felt was real, you were my best friend. No matter how young we were, I know it was real. It nearly killed me to be away from you.”

  “And what happened when you were away? What I did?” I asked.

  “It happened. It’s taking me a while to get my head around it, I still feel sad, I feel like I lost something, like my dad stole something from us, but like you say, we were sixteen. How would we have managed? I keep reminding myself that us with a baby then is a very different prospect to how I picture it when I think about us with a baby now.”

  “You picture us with a baby?”

  “Sometimes” Sunny said. “How could I not? Now I know about it and now you’re back in my life, I can’t help but hope that we might have a future together. I think we owe it to ourselves to at least give it a try to find out. I won’t like, it was a pretty big thing to learn, sure. But I meant what I said, I don’t want to lose you this time, however slowly we need to take it.”

  “I’d like that” I told him.

  “We never chose to break up, so being with you, it just feels like it was always supposed to” he said.

  So we sat, companionably and finished our breakfast, then as we walked out into the sunshine again Sunny took my hand and walked me home.

  As we got to my front door I asked him “so what’s the plan now?”

  “I have to do some running round today, a bit of cleaning.”

  I laughed.

  “What?” he said, “I’ve been working a lot lately, even you would think my flat was a mess, and my car needs a service. Let’s go for a drink tonight and we’ll grab some dinner. Why don’t we meet up at about four, head into town and go somewhere nice.”

  “That would be lovely” I said. “Do you think we need to try and call Mark again? Do you think he’s ok?”

  Sunny ran his hand through his hair. “Professionally speaking, there’s not a lot I could do if this came into the police station. There’s no sign that he’s at risk of hurting himself, in fact he’s asked us really to give him some freedom. I think we should give him a couple of days, then if we don’t hear from him think again.”

  I was reassured by Sunny’s calm perspective, maybe I’d been rushing into worrying. Mark was a grown man, even if he didn’t always dress like it. I kissed his cheek, and opened the front door. “See you later” I told him, and went inside.

  I’d had a day of relaxation time planned, reading a novel, having a long lazy bath. Just trying to unwind after such a hectic few weeks. It was lovely to come home to old friends, but it had been hard to leave my old ones. I spent a while online, catching up with the Facebook posts of my mates back in the Midlands. I saw pictures of them in our old local, but even though it had been a few weeks since I’d been there with them, I felt no desire to rush back.

  I picked up my mobile and rang Lucy. We’d met on the first day of university, and the long hours of trying to keep each other awake through lectures, or sober enough not to do anything crazy on pub trips, had helped us build a strong friendship.

  “Hey hon, it’s me” I said, as she answered her phone.

  “Amy” she exclaimed. “How are you? How’s life back in London?”

  I told her all about my new job, about meeting up with Sunny and Mark again.

  “So are you already moving on from Patrick the Pratt?” she asked. I giggled.

  “I think so” I said. “I’m trying not to rush it, and we need to make sure that we‘re not just falling back into old habits. A lot has changed since we were together, but being with him feels good. It feels…” I paused, looking for the right words. “It feels natural. Comfortable.”

  “Already?” Lucy seemed surprised. “You sound like an old married couple” she teased.

  “Well, I guess we knew each other so well, and there’s so much shared history that I don’t need to explain myself. It’s like, Patrick was this designer ball gown, I felt amazing in it, but it was fashion, it suited me for a while, but now it doesn’t. And by the end it felt too constraining. Not like every day me.”

  “So in your analogy Sunny is what, a comfy old pair of slippers?” Lucy asked.

  “No, more like, the blanket that you look forward to coming home to. That keeps you warm and is always there.”

  “Well I’m happy for you” Lucy said. “I know Patrick was nice, to start with, but he was awful to you the last few months. I don’t understand how you can treat someone you love like that”.

  “I agree. Why don’t you come and visit sometime?” I asked her. “You can come and meet Sunny for yourself.”

  “I’d like that” she said. “I want to make sure this guy is good enough for you.”

  We hung up with promises to visit soon, and I went for a bath. Sunny might be comfortable and safe, but there was no reason not to make myself feel nice and pampered before our first proper date in ten years.

  Chapter Ten

  Sunny picked me up bang on time at four o’clock, and we had time for a quick wander round Covent Garden just as the stalls packed away. We walked for hours, holding hands and not letting go. It was lovely making the most of the last sunshine of the evening as the weather began to turn colder. We talked about meeting as eleven year olds, suddenly being out of our comfort zone at an enormous school. The two smart kids sticking together for company. We talked about our first kiss. I suspected that Sunny had liked me, he’d suddenly stopped teasing me so much, and went out of his way to find reasons to walk me home or talk about homework, but he never said a word to let me know for certain, and I was convinced that left to his own devices he’d never ask me out. One day when we were supposed to working on our English coursework together he’d asked me for help. I told him I would only give him the answer if he kissed me. I was surprised with myself that I had the confidence, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  The memory was sweet, as were the memories of the six months that followed. Stealing kisses at lunchtime, walking home holding hands. Then one Friday afternoon, we’d finished our exams early and had gone to Sunny’s to celebrate. Mark left after a while, and so we’d gone up to Sunny’s room. His parents weren’t due back from work for a couple of hours. Finally we had the opportunity to act on our feelings. We were asleep afterwards, holding each other, when his dad burst in and started screaming, though I hadn’t understood any of the words.

  That evening in Covent Garden, tog
ether again, and this time without fear, he told me about what had happened after I’d left. His dad had slapped him round the face, hard enough to break his glasses, smashed his phone so that he couldn’t contact me, and locked him in the house. He’d been on a flight the next day. “I never knew why he was so angry” Sunny said. “I’d never talked to him about us going out, but he’d never minded us being friends.”

  “Was it because we were in bed together? You expect people to have misguided notions about the importance of girls’ virginity. Did he feel the same way about you?”

  Sunny shrugged. “In the end I think he was angry that I’d grown up without his permission. If I was old enough to have a relationship with you, how long would it be before I stood up to him, or moved out. I think he just wanted to control my life for as long as he could. Not anymore though” he said, and kissed me. My stomach went as light and floaty as it had when we had made out for the first time.

  When we eventually made it home that night, Sunny kissed me at the doorstep. “Do you want to come in?” I asked.

  “I do” he said, “but I won’t. It would be too easy to rush into this, and goodness knows that right now I feel like rushing. I don’t that would be right, we need time to get to know each other again, as adults. I think I have about five more minutes of will power left so I’d better go.” He kissed me one more time and said “I’ll ring you,” and he left.

  He was as good as his word though, as first thing next morning I picked up my mobile to find a voicemail from him, thanking me for a lovely evening, and promising to ring me again later.

  Chapter Eleven

  I spent the Sunday helping my mum in the garden. She was weeding, and I was hoping that I wasn’t pulling up any expensive plants, but I wasn’t sure. The day flew by though, and too soon I was back at my desk to start the new working week. I tried Mark’s mobile each morning and each afternoon, but by Wednesday there was still no reply.

  I’d booked Thursday off to travel with my dad to my old flat to collect some bags. There was only so long that you could live out of a suitcase, and as long as my belongings were back in my old flat, the knowledge that at some point I’d need to go and fetch them would continue to hang over me. I walked down into the kitchen that morning though to find him with a towel over his head and a bowl of steaming water in front of him.

  “Dad, you look awful” I said.

  “Thanks love, just what every bloke wants to hear” he replied.

  “Want me to stay home and look after you?”

  “I’ll be fine” he said. “Though maybe we can go tomorrow to grab your stuff?”

  “I can’t Dad, sorry. I’ve got meetings all day then. I’ll go by train. I can carry a fair amount anyway” I told him.

  I got ready to go, but the knot in my stomach wasn’t shifting. I’d timed my trip for a day that Patrick should be at work, I wasn’t sure I was ready to see him again. I packed some chocolate to try and help soothe my nerves, and grabbed an empty rucksack. I was just having an extra cup of coffee, just because my parents bought nice coffee, not because was procrastinating or anything. My mobile beeped and I jumped in case it was Mark, but it was Lucy, wishing me luck in my journeys. I decided not to put it off any longer.

  I left the house and set up off the road towards the station. I was just crossing the main road by what used to be, and I guess would now be again, my dentist when I heard a car horn behind me. I carried on walking, in London you just mind your own business, when I heard Sunny calling my name.

  “Hi babe” he said, pulling his car over.

  “Hey” I said, walking over towards him. “Wish me luck, I’m on my way to grab some more of my stuff.” I think he could sense my excitement as he climbed out of the car to give me a hug.

  “I thought your dad was taking you?”

  “He was” I said, with my shoulders slumping, “but he’s full of cold. I left him at home feeling sorry for himself, though to be fair not as sorry as I feel for myself right now.”

  “Why don’t I take you?” he suggested.

  “Don’t you have work?” I asked.

  “Just finished, I was on last night.” Come to mention it he did look tired.

  “That’s kind of you to offer, but you look shattered.”

  “No, nothing a couple of hours sleep and a coffee wouldn’t cure. Do you have a driving licence?”

  I nodded. “Come on” he said, let’s go to mine, I’ll ring my insurance company and add you. Then you can drive and I’ll sleep on the way.”

  I felt mean dragging him out, but not so mean that I’d prefer to go on my own. I climbed into the passenger seat and we drove back the way I’d just come. We parked two streets over from my parents’ house and walked up to his flat. He had the top floor of a converted terraced house. I wondered just how neat it would be inside.

  “Let me just grab a shower” Sunny said. “I’ll be ten minutes.”

  He left me alone in his living room and I resisted the urge to mess up his cushions and to move the frames on the wall so that they weren’t quite straight. I wandered round, wondering how anyone found the time to keep their CDs so tidy, let alone in such strict alphabetical order. Sunny was right, he needed help loosening up.

  He came out the bathroom a few minutes later. I was hoping he’d come out wrapped in just a towel, but ever the gentleman he had obviously taken his clean clothes in with him as he was fully dressed.

  “Will you put the kettle on while I sort out the insurance please?” he asked.

  “No problem” I said.

  “I take it you’ve not got any speeding points or anything have you?”

  I was happy to say I hadn’t, the points had come off my licence last year. I walked into the kitchen and started looking for the mugs. I might also have opened one or two additional cupboards just to see if the jars and tins were lined up straight. I don’t know why I had to check, of course they were.

  I made the coffee and carried it through to the living room, just as Sunny read out his credit card numbers, thanked the person on the phone and hung up. “We’re good to go” he said, yawning.

  “Are you sure you want to?” I asked.

  “Yes, I don’t want you to have to deal with this prat on your own.”

  “How did you know what we call him?”

  “What do you call him? That’s just what I think of him” Sunny replied.

  “It kind of became the nickname that Lucy and I used when it all started to go wrong. I had to remember not to call it him to his face by the end. Come to think of it, it is really lucky I moved out.”

  “Lucky for me” Sunny said, coming to me and giving me a long, slow kiss.

  “I wish I didn’t have to do this” I said. “I could replace the clothes, but I’ve got some photo albums and some jewellery that I’d really love to have back. Patrick should be at work til about six. If we go now we should have hours to spare.”

  Sunny chugged his coffee and handed me his car keys. “Please don’t break the speed limit, I’d hate to get pulled over on my day off.”

  Three CDs later and we were nearly there. Sunny had been true to his word and slept pretty much the entire journey. I stopped at yet another set of traffic lights on the way into the city. I went to pull off again as the lights turned green but the engine stalled. Sunny woke up with a jerk. “Are we here?” he asked.

  “Almost” I said, restarting the engine. I drove round the corner, spotted a gap barely longer than the car and flicked the indicator on. My old flat was on a narrow one way road, and there was barely space between the rows of parked cars on both sides to angle properly for the manoeuvre. It was a tight squeeze and I could see Sunny biting his lip to keep from offering suggestions as I reversed into the space, but the years of living near here had paid off and I got in easily first time.

  “Impressive” he said, raising his eyebrows.

  “Chauvinist” I responded.

  “What?” he said, raising his hands in a defensive po
sture, “I meant it, I’d have had to do that slower.”

  “It’s true” I said. “I did used to do that slower too, when I was driving my own car.”

  I left him slightly dazed and speechless and walked towards my old front door. I took the key out of my pocket, took a deep breath, and said “let’s do this.”

  I walked in and was relieved to find that Patrick the Prat really was at work. It had seemed polite to let him know when I was planning to go, but it had also given him one last opportunity to hang around so that he could play games if he had so chosen.

  I took my rucksack into the bedroom and started packing. “Why don’t you curl up on the sofa and get a bit more sleep” I called out.

  “I don’t know” Sunny said. “I’m not exactly feeling relaxed here.”

  “This was my home” I said, and I felt tears in my eyes. I’d worked so hard to make it cosy, once upon a time when I had been so full of hope for the place. The sofa and cushions were ones I had chosen, not to mention paid for. As were the pictures on the walls and the rug.

  “It’s ok, love” Sunny said, hugging me.

  “I know, I’ll be fine once this done. I’ll tell you what, will you help bag my clothes and carry them down while I sort through the DVDs and photo albums.”

  I made us another cup of coffee. I hoped we could be finished in half an hour and back in London by mid afternoon. I was packing my earrings into a box as I heard the front door shut.

  “Damn” I said, walking out to the living room to see Patrick. “I thought you said you’d be at work today.”

  “I forgot my files” he said, picking up a bunch of papers from the table.

  “I’ll be out of here in a few minutes” I told him. “I shouldn’t need to come back again after that, but you have my email address if you need to contact me to send me any last bills.”

  “Will do” he said, and I was amazed at how civil we were managing to be. At least, until the toilet flushed and Sunny walked back into the living room. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” he asked, but he crossed his arms and stared at Sunny.